Nearly Optimal Linear Programming Solutions: Some Conceptual Issues and a Farm Management Application

Abstract

Nearly optimal solutions in linear programming provide useful information to decision makers. Modeling to generate alternatives may be used to generate a set of nearly optimal solutions from which a decision maker may select the desired solution by considering criteria not quantified in the model. The mathematical problem is to find vertices of a convex polytope. A pivoting method of vertex enumeration is used to generate all extreme‐point nearly optimal solutions of an example problem involving selection of a marketing strategy for beef calves. Compared to the optimal solution, nearly optimal solutions have more diversity or use less cash or hired labor.